Massive cost overruns and time delays

ROADS: The National Development Plan (NDP) launched in November 1999 proposed an investment of €5.6 billion on national road improvement between 2000 and 2006. At the end of 2003, it was estimated that this programme would cost not €5.6 billion but €16.4 billion. That is an overrun of €10.8 billion. For 2005, the projected capital expenditure for all projects (roads, hospitals, schools etc) was €6 billion.

This means that we threw away the equivalent of nearly two years capital expenditure on the roads programme alone. The capital expenditure on health has been at around half a billion, which means that we threw away the equivalent of 20 times the annual capital expenditure on health on the roads project.

One of the reasons this occurred was because the National Roads Authority lacked costing expertise when the programme started.

In 2000 it was acknowledged that the roads project would not be completed by 2006 but it was expected 80 per cent of the programme would be finished by then. But it now emerges that not even half the programme will be finished by the end of 2006 and almost a third will not be completed before 2008.

LUAS: The Luas overspending was worse than Eddie Hobbs reported. He said the initial cost estimate was €330 milllion and this had escalated to €778 million. While the figures are accurate, the reality is worse. Because when in 1994 the Dublin Transport Initiative recommended the LUAS project for a cost of €329m, this was for a three lane system: the existing Tallaght and Sandyford lines but also a third line from Ballymun to the city centre. So what has happened is that we got a two line system for well over twice the cost of a three line system and instead of us having all three lines by 1999, as originally envisaged, we got just two lines only in 2005.